Today In Spain: A roundup of the latest news on Monday

Two former ETA members among Spaniards on board Gaza flotilla

Among the 50 Spanish crew members on board the Gaza flotilla seized by the Israeli authorities last week, two former members of the Basque terrorist group ETA.

According to reporting from state broadcaster RTVE, José Javier Osés Carrasco, alias Jotas, and Itziar Moreno Martínez, alias Hodei, were on board the boat Sirius. The former mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, was sailing on the same vessel.

Osés was arrested by the French police in Albi, Occitania in June 2012 and subsequently sentenced by the Paris Correctional Court to 8 years in prison as a member of ETA's logistical-military wing. In 2018 he was released after having spent six years in prison, five of them in France.

Brussels announces €1.6 billion in aid for Valencia flood reconstruction

The European Commission is to provide over €1.5 billion in funds for the reconstruction of flood-damaged areas during the floods in October 2024 that killed over 200 in the Valencia region.

Almost €1 billion (€945 million) will come from the EU Solidarity Fund and a further €645 million from cohesion funds.

"The devastation we witnessed almost a year ago in the Valencia region and in Spain deeply affected Europe... Today we are committing nearly €1.6 billion of European funds to support the vital work of recovery, repair and reconstruction," said EU President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement.

Spanish opposition leader proposes expelling migrants who lie about their age

Spain's centre-right Partido Popular (PP) opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has proposed expelling migrants who lie about their age.

The announcement comes amid a string of new measures in the PP's immigration plan that advocates a migration model focusing on migrants "culturally close" to Spain. When announcing the proposal, the opposition leader explained that this was one policy to repair what he described as the ‘"the failure" of the Sánchez government to control migration.

"If we believe that Spain's migration policy has failed, we must have a model to fix it. If we believe that one of the problems of migration policy is age fraud of those that illegally enter Spain, we must pursue this fraud so that minors do not live with adults," Feijóo said.

"If the age of someone who enters Spain illegally and lives for months with minors is not determined quickly, it's clear that the system is failing and those minors that the government claims to want to protect are the ones who are left unprotected."

Hundreds demonstrate against the abandonment of Spain's rural areas

Hundreds of people demonstrated on Sunday in Madrid under the slogan "Save the under attack rural world" to protest the abandonment of their villages, the lack of public services , and the large-scale renewable energy projects that threaten their natural resources.

Shouting "Speculators out of my land!" and "No to solar panels, yes to olive trees!", some 1,500 people from different locations across Spain attended this rally, which was led by around 50 organisations and which marched along Paseo del Prado from Atocha to Cibeles.